21, December 2018
French National Assembly approves Macron’s tax concessions to ‘Yellow Vest’ protesters 0
The French National Assembly on Friday approved a package of emergency concessions first announced by President Emmanuel Macron in a bid to end the violent “yellow vest” protests. The tax cuts for low-income workers were put forward by Macron in a televised address earlier this month to help cool weeks of protests that brought major disruption to the country.
The measures provide a “quick, strong and concrete response” to the crisis, said the labour minister Muriel Penicaud in a debate which lasted into the early hours of Friday morning. The measures include the removal of a planned tax increase for a majority of pensioners and tax-free overtime pay for all workers.
Economists estimate the cuts will cost up to 15 billion euros ($17 billion). The concessions will now move to the Senate for approval. Tens of thousands of people joined rallies across France on consecutive Saturdays in a movement which sprung up over fuel tax hikes but snowballed into broader opposition to Macron.
Police this week said they would start removing barricades at roundabouts and on motorways after the demonstrations began to run out of steam.
The protests, which at times spiralled into violence, took a toll on the economy, with businesses counting the cost of supply disruptions, smashed property and a dearth of shoppers and tourists who stayed away from city centres.
On Thursday the president told critics of the fuel tax hikes “you’re right” after 1.15 million people signed a petition suggesting several other ways to fight fossil fuel pollution.
Macron called the petition a “citizens’ act”.
“Your message, I heard it. I am responding to you directly, you are right,” Macron wrote on the website Change.org.
He reminded the petition signers that his government has cancelled the planned increase in fuel tax and that no hikes in gas and electricity prices would be made during the winter.
While restating that reducing fossil fuels which contribute to climate change was a necessary action, Macron added that it “must not put the problems of the end of the world in opposition to the problems at the end of the month” alluding to the anger of the “yellow vest” protest movement about the cost of living in France and the difficulty in making ends meet.
The number of people who have been killed during the “yellow vest” protests since they began in early November rose to nine on Thursday after a 60-year-old man was hit by a lorry at a demonstration next to a motorway near Agen in southwestern France.
(AFP)
21, December 2018
Biya regime bans ‘President Ali Bongo death’ claim television 0
Cameroon has slammed a one-month ban on a private television station that falsely announced the death of Gabonese President Ali Bongo Odimba while he was in a Saudi hospital. Cameroon Media watchdog, the National Communication Council (NCC), said the Yaoundé-based Vision 4 television aired an “unfounded declaration” on its prime time newscast of October 27.
The council said the broadcast was a gross disrespect of “professional requirements of investigation and crosschecking of information delivered to the public”. Gabonese authorities had in October banned the TV channel on its territory for six months for the same reason.
Latest prohibitions
NCC also imposed a one month ban on journalist and Vision 4 TV director Ernest Oboma “for inciting tribal hatred and violence” on television. Officials of the channel have snubbed similar decisions against them by the watchdog previously and it was not clear whether they would respect the latest prohibitions.
Besides Vision 4 TV and its director, the Cameroon media regulator also sanctioned four other media organs and about 20 local journalists for allegedly flouting professional ethics.
Pre-trial detention
The council said it had prohibited Ms Mireille Flore, a journalist with Canal 2 International television, from practising in the country following a complaints against her by a bicycle repairer who she presented in a report, “without proof”, as a paedophile. Mr Dom Pipelassi Michael Dopass, a journalist and presenter of the radio programme, Sports and Investigation, was slammed a two-month ban following the broadcast of “unfounded claims” against football legend Samuel Eto’o, the NCC said.
The council also suspended the Sports and Investigation programme for same reason and same duration. The journalist who works for the Yaoundé-based Soleil FM is in pre-trial detention in the Cameroon capital for same crime. The Cameroon Journalists Trade Union (SNJC) was yet to comment on the latest sanctions by the regulator, but had described previous suspensions by the watchdog as attempts by government to muzzle the already gagged press.
Culled from The East African